k. When the Commonwealth Navy, now being
constructed, is in commission, part of its duty will be to patrol the
northern coast and prevent Asiatics landing there to victimize the
blacks.

The official statistics of the Commonwealth reported, in regard to the
aborigines, in the year 1907:

"In Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia, on the other
hand, there are considerable numbers of natives still in the 'savage'
state, numerical information concerning whom is of a most unreliable
nature, and can be regarded as little more than the result of mere
guessing. Ethnologically interesting as is this remarkable and rapidly
disappearing race, practically all that has been done to increase our
knowledge of them, their laws, habits, customs, and language, has been
the result of more or less spasmodic and intermittent effort on the part
of enthusiasts either in private life or the public service. Strange to
say, an enumeration of them has never been seriously undertaken in
connection with any State census, though a record of the numbers who
were in the employ of whites, or living in contiguity to the settlements
of whites, has usually been made. As stated above, various guesses at
the number of aboriginal natives at present in Australia have been made,
and the general opinion appears to be that 150,000 may be taken as a
rough approximation to the total. It is proposed to make an attempt to
enumerate the aboriginal population of Australia in connection with the
first Commonwealth Census to be taken in 1911."

A very primitive savage was the Australian aboriginal. He had no
architecture, but in cold or wet weather built little break-winds,
called mia-mias. He had no weapons of steel or any other metal. His
spears were tipped with the teeth of fish, the bones of animals, and
with roughly sharpened flints. He had no idea of the use of the bow and
arrow, but had a curious throwing-stick, which, working on the principle
of a sling, would cast a missile a great distance. These were his
weapons--rough spears, throwing-sticks, and clubs called nullahs, or
waddys. (I am not sure that these latter are original native words. The
blacks had a way of picking up white men's slang and adding it to their
very limited vocabulary; thus the evil spirit is known among them as the
"debbil-debbil.") Another weapon the aboriginal had, the boomerang, a
curiously curved missile stick which, if it missed the object at which
it was aimed, would